Henry R. Van Til (the nephew of Cornelius) is often credited with the remarkable insight, "Culture is religion externalized." However, if you read the following portion from the chapter on the relationship of religion and culture in his book, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, you will find out that those words are actually a paraphrase of a quote properly attributed to Paul Tillich.

At any rate, Van Til makes the crucial point here that our deepest religious convictions penetrate our entire being and form the axis on which our lives rotate. Every human being is a religious being at the very core. Says Van Til,

It is...more correct to ask what the role of culture is in religion than to put the question the other way around, as Hutchison does, 'What is religion's role in culture?' For man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his relationship to God. Religion, to paraphrase the poet's expressive phrase, is not of life a thing apart, it is man's whole existence. Hutchison, indeed, comes to the same conclusion when he says, 'For religion is not one aspect or department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consists rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute'. Tillich has captured the idea in a trenchant line, 'Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion.'

The Westminster Shorter Catechism maintains at the outset that man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. However other-worldly this may sound to some, Presbyterians have interpreted this biblically to mean that man is to serve God in his daily calling, which is the content of religion. This service cannot be expressed except through man's cultural activity, which gives expression to his religious faith. Now faith is the function of the heart, and out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23). This is the first principle of a biblically oriented psychology.

No man can escape this religious determination of his life, since God is the inescapable, ever-present Fact of man's existence. God may be loved or hated, adored or debased, but he cannot be ignored. The sense of God (sensus deitatis) is still the seed of religion (semen religionis). All of primitive religion is corroboration of the cry of the Psalmist, "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or wither shall I flee from thy presence?" (Ps. 139:7).

And it is for this reason I steadfastly maintain that life is religion. There simply is no way around it.

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The words that follow belong to David J. Bosch, the renowned South African missiologist, who initially had them published in the December 1979 issue of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa. This is the kind of thing that simply electrifies me.

As Lord, Jesus was given 'all power in heaven and on earth' (Matt. 28:18). He is therefore repeatedly referred to as 'Saviour of the world' (John 4:42; 1 John 4:14). 'All things were created by him, and all things exist through him and for him,' says Paul (Rom. 11:36). It is the purpose of God to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head (Eph. 1:10).

All this means that the Kingdom of God (or the Lordship of Christ) is without boundaries. Christ is Lord of all. Naturally, his Lordship his not yet openly and finally manifested. The ultimate is yet to come. We live in the penultimate. We still wait for the day of which Rev. 11:15 speaks, when, as it affirms 'the kingdoms of this world are to become the Kingdom of God,' when God 'will be all in all' (1 Cor. 15:28). For the time being Christ's Lordship over the universe is anonymous; he is not recognised and acclaimed as Lord.

We should, however, not deduce from this that God has handed the universe over to the counter-forces. He is not an absentee Lord whose estate is being ransacked by his enemies during his absence. To be sure, the enemy is active in God's world, extremely active, but we should never allow ourselves to accept that this world belongs to the enemy. If areas of the universe indeed appear to be enemy-occupied territory, let us never for one moment forget that they are occupied illegally, by a usurpur. Satan does not belong in this world. The earth is the Lord's.

If we forget this we commit the same mistake as those Christians who argue...that we had better withdraw from the world into a religious enclave. The terrible thing these Christians are doing is to grant legality to the spurious claim of the enemy that this world belongs to him, not to God! And when Jesus said to Pilate, 'My Kingdom is not of this world', his words should not be understood as meaning that his Kingdom is entirely other-worldly. It should rather, within the context of John's gospel, be understood to mean, 'My Kingdom does not operate according to the rules of this world which have been adulterated by Satan. My Kingdom is unique. But this does not make it other-worldly.' Did Jesus not, after all, teach his disciples to pray, 'Thy Kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?' Therefore, if we Christians surrender this world to Satan, we play right into his hands. And we betray the Lordship of Christ.

I will leave you to draw out the practical implications of Bosch's excellent words. They are legion.

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Byron Borger has followed up his last post (which I mentioned here) with another post today building on what he previously said. I highly recommend you read his latest post as well, in which he speaks extensively and encouragingly of Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew's latest book, Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview. I have yet to read it myself, but having studied under Goheen I have already been deeply impacted by many of the ideas in this book. Borger, in the middle of the post, again speaks of why worldview study is so important.

[Worldview study] is not just for eggheads or intellectuals. We all long for coherence and integrated lives. We are not content with a narrow faith and the more attentive we are to the Bible, the more we come away informed by this comprehensive claim that Christ makes over all of life. Such coherence and integrity leads to joy. It is as simple as that: life lived out of a distinctively and intentional Christian worldview is more complicated (everything matters) and demanding (we cannot conform to the ways of the world, not in voting, or shopping, in sexual matters or business matters or recreational matters.) Yet, in that cost of discipleship comes joy. I think Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life touched something deep about all this, and it is revealing just how popular that was a few years back. In this postmodern world, we sense things unravelling, and we yearn for meaning, purpose, direction. A comprehensive framework for understanding things makes for a purposeful life. It makes for a joyful life. It makes for a righteous life.

Click here to read the rest of his post, and here to read another review of the book. Borger's last two posts are well worth your time, and his recommendations are well worth the space on your bookshelves.

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For quite a while now I have been following the BookNotes blog, authored by Byron Borger, who runs a bookstore up in Dallastown, Pennsylvania, called Hearts & Minds. The bookstore stocks books on all kinds of topics with the intent of helping people learn how to live out the truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of their life. Borger's latest post focuses on what lies at the root of learning how to live in that way. He says,

The fruitful way to integrate and live out a robust, multi-faceted, culture-making, spiritually-alive and Biblically faithful way of life in the world is to be intentional about studying how we see. Yes, our view of things, our imaginative constructs, our assumptions and attitudes, our underlying values, all shape how we think about all of life. The glasses we wear colors our interpretation of everything, and our subsequent views of discipleship—what to do and what not to do, and how to do the most ordinary things, how to make sense out of life, and how to live—are informed by our vision, the glasses we wear. The most effective, lasting and radical way to get church folks equipped for a life of service before God in the real world is to focus a bit from time to time on seeing life Christianly, from God's viewpoint. That is, we must study the topic of worldview.

What Borger says here is crucial, and I could not agree more. Click here to go read the rest of the post, because he follows this discussion with a recommendation of a number of books on the topic, some of which I have read and have impacted me tremendously, others of which I know are excellent and look forward to reading as soon as I can.

I encourage you to read BookNotes on a regular basis if you, like myself, are always in the market for good books. Borger's recommendations are always thoughtful, carefully selected, and thoroughly reviewed. In addition, all his recommendations usually come with a special discount offer you can access through the website.

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Albert M. Wolters' book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basic for a Reformational Worldview, is not a large book--my 1985 edition is only 98 pages--but it contains a wealth of wisdom and insight into the biblical revelation. I recently mentioned some of the things he had to say about the role that worldview plays in our lives, and now want to direct your attention to some of the things he has to say on the relationship of worldview to Scripture. Consider this first:

What, then, is the relationship of worldview to Scripture? The Christian answer to this is clear: our worldview must be shaped and tested by Scripture. It can legitimately guide our lives only if it is Scriptural. This means that in the matter of worldview there is a significant gulf between those who accept this Scripture as God's Word and those who do not. It also means that Christians must constantly check their worldview beliefs against the Scriptures, because failing that there will be a powerful inclination to appropriate many of our beliefs, even basic ones, from a culture that has been secularizing at an accelerating rate for generations (6).

Here Wolters sets up quite clearly the need for letting Scripture be the foundational starting point for shaping and forming our worldview. The need for that worldview to be comprehensive and consistently biblical cannot be understated. But why must Scripture be our ultimate standard? Because, Wolters says, "as Christians we confess that the Scriptures have the authority of God, which is supreme over everything else" (6). Only with this understanding can we begin to live faithfully. We need to be firmly rooted and grounded in this authority because we face an onslaught from every side.

There is considerable pressure on Christians to restrict their recognition of the authority of Scripture to the area of the church, theology, and private morality--an area that has become basically irrelevant to the direction of culture and society as a whole. That pressure, though, is itself the fruit of a secular worldview, and must be resisted by Christians with all the resources at their disposal. The fundamental resources are the Scriptures themselves (6).

That tendency to let Scripture only shape some parts of our lives and thought is a prevalent one. That is why it is so important that we continually immerse ourselves in the Word and have it dwell in our hearts. The sovereignty of God extends as far as creation, and therefore we need to realize that

Scripture speaks centrally to everything in our life and world, including technology and economics and science. The scope of biblical teaching includes such ordinary 'secular' matters as labor, social groups, and education. Unless such matters are approached in terms of a worldview based squarely on such central scriptural categories as creation, sin, and redemption, our assessment of these supposedly nonreligious dimensions of our lives will likely be dominated instead by one of the competing worldviews of the secularized West. Consequently, it is essential to relate the basic concepts of 'biblical theology' to our worldview--or rather to understand these basic concepts as constituting a worldview. In a certain sense the plea being made here for a biblical worldview is simply an appeal to the believer to take the Bible and its teaching seriously for the totality of our civilization right now and not to relegate it to some optional area called 'religion' (7-8).

Wolters' neocalvinist and Kuyperian sympathies can be clearly seen, for his statements here echo the oft-quoted words of the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper: "In the total expanse of human life there is not a square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'" A biblical worldview means bringing the totality of our lives into conformity with the authoritative revelation of God. Faithfulness in belief, life, and thought must be built on this foundation alone.

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I am still working on some more thoughts on the idea of the palingenesis that I spoke about in the previous post, and will hopefully have some more material to post on that topic soon. In the meantime, I want to return to the concept of worldview again, specifically as addressed by Albert M. Wolters, whom I was privileged to have as a teacher in college.

In his book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, he discusses the idea of a biblical and Reformational worldview. Beginning first with a definition of the concept of worldview, which according to him is "the comprehensive framework of one's basic belief about things," he then goes on to speak of the essential role a worldview plays in our lives.

Our worldview functions as a guide to our life. A worldview, even when it is half unconscious and unarticulated, functions like a compass or a road map. It orients us in the world at large, gives us a sense of what is up and what is down, what is right and what is wrong in the confusion of events and phenomena that confronts us. Our worldview shapes, to a significant degree, the way we assess the events, issues, and structures of our civilization and our times. It allows us to 'place' or 'situate' the various phenomena that come into our purview. Of course, other factors play a role in this orientation process (psychological or economic self-interest, for example), but these other factors do not eliminate the guiding role of one's worldview; they often exert their influence precisely via our life-perspective.

One of the unique characteristics of human beings is that we cannot do without the kind of orientation and guidance that a worldview gives. We need guidance because we are inescapably creatures with responsibility who by nature are incapable of holding purely arbitrary opinions or making entirely unprincipled decisions. We need some creed to live by, some map by which to chart our course. The need for a guiding perspective is basic to human life (4).

Since our worldview plays such an essential role in our life, I believe it is of great importance that we are aware of our worldview and engaged in a constant effort to make it consistent with Scripture. I also believe that it is crucial that students, particularly at the level of undergraduate study, be given instruction in this area, although I think it is a study worth engaging in by anyone. I will come back to some more things Wolters has to say in coming days.

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In a February 1 post, Andy Groen writes a reflective and powerful piece on what it means to be a Christian in business. "For the most part," Groen writes, "I have been taught that being a Christian in business means being a Christian while doing business" (emphasis his). This is not satisfactory enough for him; rather, what is required is a critical evaluation and challenging of the foundational structures of business that exist in our world.

And it's so true. Being a Christian in any part of society these days requires so much more than thrusting ourselves into that area and merely displaying Christian values in our daily presentation of ourselves. Being a Christian means that we go into our area, be it business, psychology, art, engineering, with the goal of thoroughly challenging the structures that exist especially if they are unjust. And in doing so, we must be prepared to suffer for it.

Let me return to the area of business. I certainly am no expert in the field, nor do I ever intend to enter it. But I know several people who are in the field already, or planning to enter it, who included my dad in the former category, and both my girlfriend, Robin, and Mr. Groen in the latter. I still appreciate a capitalist economy, though most definitely a "scaled-down" version of what we experience here in North America. I recognize the depraved nature of our economic system, and the thorough individualization that is so characteristic of it. So I challenge those I mentioned, and others who are planning on entering the field to begin asking themselves questions now. What exactly are you going to do to challenge the unjust structures that exist? Are you willing to speak out against it and defend yourself on the presupposed Christian ethics that Mr. Groen suggests? Are you willing to suffer for it?

If a business-person, or planning-to-enter-business-person cannot answer "yes" to all those questions, then it is time to critically examine your position and be ready to change it. And if you can't, then leave the business field, or for that matter, any field in which you can't answer in the affirmative to all the questions.

We have a large calling as Christians that we need to answer. We can't fall into complacency, for that is a deadly way to allow the Devil his foothold. In the words of the powerful old hymn, "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, as soldiers of the cross!"

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